undefined | Better HN

0 pointsPragmaticPulp4y ago0 comments

> I overhauled my garage, building a French cleat system and organizing all of my tools. I built a movie/reading nook for my spouse, with a sliding bookshelf door. I caught up on cutting and splitting firewood for winter. I played board games, cooked, baked, rode bike almost every day, sat in the cool breeze overlooking nature, sat by the fire pit and boy, was I not bored.

Your post looks a lot like what I did along side a 40 hour per week job before I reached FIRE. Sure, I couldn’t do it as quickly but it’s not as though having a job is mutually exclusive with riding a bike every day or overhauling the garage on weekends.

One of the biggest things I learned post-FIRE was that doing the things I enjoy wasn’t as difficult as I had come to think while I was employed. There’s something about FIRE blogs that makes it easy to think of activities as pre-FIRE (work) and post-FIRE (fun).

Instead, I’d rather work on balance. Find jobs where 40 hours per week is average and I don’t have to waste time on commuting. Then make time in the evenings and weekends to do things I enjoy.

0 comments

neogodless4y ago

It's technically true, but also hard to do in reality.

Right now, I barely have time to make coffee before my first meeting. My energy levels after sitting at the computer for 8+ hours are not great. The moments where the weather is "just right" for a lot of activities are severely hampered by the time I must be by the computer.

I know, because I'm way behind on firewood again. There are some mornings where the weather would be OK for it, but they usually don't fall on Saturday for some reason. Or we have plans to go on a camping trip that Saturday, so again I skip that task.

This adds up for each instance of those things. (I've seen it take weeks to build something simple... while unemployed I took on much bigger projects over much shorter time frames.)

Sure, I agree that during your working career seek out jobs that don't overly impede your autonomy. But if you can wipe out 40 hours every week that is doing so, suddenly you have much more freedom.

With that freedom, you spend each day, all day, choosing among the things you want to be doing. While working, it's much harder to take a couple of hours in the evening or your precious weekends, and splitting them up into all the things you want to do, and many of them get left behind.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse